Biographer Clinton Heylin referred to this album by Morrison as "His most consummate record since Wavelength and his most intriguingly involved since Astral Weeks, this is bursting to saturation point, Morrison at this most mystical, magical best."[1]

Upon release in 1986, it charted at number twenty-seven in the UK and number seventy on the Billboard 200.

The album was recorded at Studio D and Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, California in 1985 with Jim Stern as engineer.[2] The basic takes were recorded at Studio D with Chris Michie, Jef Labes, Baba Trunde, David Hayes and Morrison. Overdubs, guitar solos, strings and back-up vocals were added at the Record Plant with the masters taken to Townhouse Studios in London. Overdubs with Ritchie Buckley on saxophone, Martin Drover on trumpet and oboe played by Kate St. John were added in the London studio.[1]

The song "In the Garden" was a favorite fan concert performance for years. Morrison told Mick Brown in 1986 on the Interview Album: "I take you through a definite meditation process which is a form of transcendental meditation. It's not about TM, forget about that. You should have some degree of tranquillity by the time you get to the end. It only takes about ten minutes to do this process."[3] There are references back to Astral Weeks with gardens wet with rain and a childlike vision.[4] The words are poetic as in the line "you are a creature all in rapture/You had the key to your soul".

"Got to Go Back" features Kate St. John's oboe and reminisces of school days back in the singer's childhood in Belfast. "Oh, The Warm Feeling" is also a song of feeling the safety of family and love in childhood.

"Foreign Window" is a song concerned with dealing with some sort of self-imposed therapy and having to go on no matter what. Brian Hinton remarks, "There is a grace and majesty here which I have experienced from little else in rock music."

"Here Comes the Knight" is a pun on the Them song "Here Comes the Night" and quotes from the epitaph on the gravestone of one of Van's favorite poets, W. B. Yeats. The Yeats Estate had denied Morrison's request to transform a Yeats poem to music, but the gravestone was considered public property: "Here come horsemen through the pass / They say cast a cold eye on life, on death".

"Ivory Tower" echoes Yeats once more.

The song "Thanks For the Information" is a comment on the cliches of the business world.[5]

This album was hailed by most critics as a return to form and gave Morrison his best reviews of any of his albums in the eighties.[1] John Wilde in Sounds remarks, "the crescendos here are never dampened by their subtle nature and never fall short of blinding. The whole album aches with a steady stream of sorrow" and concluded by calling it the best record of that year so far, upon release.[1]David Fricke with Rolling Stone described the album as "a fragile, familiar schematic, laid out over haunting, circular melodies airbrushed with acoustic guitars and often abruptly broken up by Morrison's idiosyncratic vocal phrasing."[9]

NMEs review was less enthusiastic than most others and found, "He no longer takes the breath away and as a musician has been content to age with dignity."[10]

The 2008 reissued and remastered version of the album contains an alternative take of "Oh the Warm Feeling" and a previously unreleased Morrison composition "Lonely at the Top". "Thanks for the Information" from this album was listed as one of the standout tracks from the six album reissue.[11]